On a bright March morning,Surjit Hans pores over a hardbound copy of The Merry Wives of Windsor at his Mohali home. The 83-year-old has spent his mornings this way for the last 20 years meticulously studying the works of the Bard of Avon. His dedication has now paid off. Hans has translated all of Shakespeares works,including 38 plays,into Punjabi the last being Henry VIII,which he completed in January this year. And with his feat,he has given Punjabi the honour of being the only Indian language in which all of Shakespeares works have been translated. Even though Hans began translating the works full-time only after his retirement from Guru Nanak Dev University,Amritsar,in 1993,his association with the bard goes back to 1953. As a student of English and Philosophy at Hoshiarpurs Punjab University,he had enacted the roles of Seyton in Macbeth and Laertes in Hamlet,and even translated Macbeth into Punjabi. After graduating,Hans moved to London,where he worked as a customs official at Heathrow Airport. But the lack of money did not deter him from joining the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre club there. It was my haunt back in Southall. The year was 1965,and for a nominal charge,I saw the best of Shakespeare. People are sceptical of doing Shakespeare in the native language,but I was swept off my feet viewing a production of Macbeth in Zulu and realised the wide scope of Shakespeares plays, he says. The idea of translating his plays into Punjabi struck him then,but when he returned to India in 1972 to work as an academic,his job consumed his time,and took him away from indulging in Shakespeare. So no sooner did he retire than Hans took on the mammoth task of translating the bards repertoire,working eight hours a day. Hans says that Shakespeares language is similar to the language of folk songs and chittas (printed version of local stories) of Punjab. But there were challenges too,like Punjabi has no words equivalent to she,her,him and he had to indicate these words with verbs. Every language has its own personality,which translation has to take into account. One cannot rely alone on the dictionary, he says. He adds that he had been preparing for translation for a long time,as an actor performing live the plays of Shakespeare. Hans adds that metaphors are useful tools in translations because replacing certain Punjabi words with English ones is a challenge. Ask Hans to list some works which are closest to his heart and he chooses Henry VIII,Richard III,Twelfth Night and King Lear. My likes or dislikes are less important,but many of Shakespeares plays would be relevant to Punjabi readers. Relationships and love in As You Like It will strike a chord with Punjabis,as would King Lear,with the mistreatment of the elderly rampant here. Richard III will remind people of the civil war between the sons of Shah Jahan, he says. Shakespeares prose,adds Hans,is as good as his poetry,but critics missed it entirely,for they assumed poetry is better than prose. The English are fond of metaphors,but I believe you should be able to say the same thing in ordinary words, he says,as he recalls a poem he wrote to God to keep him alive,for he wanted to complete the translations. Now that Hans is done with Shakespeare his translations are published by Punjabi University,Patiala his next project is translating Charles Darwins The Origin of Species.
